6500 extra teachers....

[noblegiraffe]

This was one of Labour's main headline pledges. They were a bit vague on the details - is this 6500 more than the amount of teachers that are currently needed, or 6500 more than the Tories managed to recruit, which was well below the amount currently needed? I don't know.

Anyway, where are we at?
Teachers were awarded a 5.5% pay rise as recommended - good.
Ofsted single word judgements scrapped immediately - good.
PPA can now be taken from home - meh, maybe good for primary
Performance related pay scrapped -good

The situation:
Teacher trainee recruitment targets were massively missed again for this September so schools will continue to have unfilled vacancies next September.

The projected fall in pupil numbers due to decreasing birth rates won't be as big as expected so more primary teachers will be needed (and this will impact school funding as fewer pupils meant there was going to be potentially spare cash in the system).

Potentially more pupils in the state system from private could be balanced out by returning private teachers to state schools. That will take some time to shake out.

PGCE mentors are now expected to do 20 hours of training this year to be a mentor, and lead mentors 30 hours, regardless of how experienced they are. This is putting people off being mentors so PGCE providers are struggling to find placements for what few trainees they have.

Workload for teachers is increasing due to lack of funding, and lack of teachers, so they have less time to devote to training teachers. The lack of experienced teachers available to train them is also a problem. At the same time, the demands of training new teachers on schools has increased (e.g. the NQT year is now two years of support and reduced timetable and schools also need to provide PGCE students with 4 extra weeks of intensive training and practice).

This is an extremely urgent issue, and a key government pledge, so why all the airtime about anything to do with education is being taken up with bloody VAT is beyond me.

The impact of the lack of teachers in the system is huge. Inability to recruit teachers means kids have supply and cover teachers which affects their learning, but also their behaviour across the school as they become disaffected in those subjects. Experienced teachers are not only having to plan lessons for the supply teachers and sometimes mark for them too, they are having to pick up the pieces and fill in the gaps when they teach the classes the next year. Heads of Department are spending huge amounts of time fielding legitimate complaints about the quality of teaching. Advertising for positions that cannot be filled is expensive.

What do Labour need to do to turn this around?

@Frowningprovidence I taught in Scotland. There is no teacher appraisal here. You move up the scale depending on experience, nothing else.

I taught for 40 years and absolutely nothing would make me return. The behaviour issues need to be addressed and to stop teachers always getting the blame for everything.
We have QIOs who are all former secondary teachers who come round primary schools and criticise what they see. They wouldn't have a bloody clue what to do in a primary classroom.

This is the kind of shit I couldn't put up with.

So how do you identify poor performing staff if you don't have appraisals? Teaching seems to be the only profession/job where performance appraisals aren't tolerated or expected, it should be one of the most regulated professions surely?

They do. It's called tax.

We are constantly monitored and have the Teaching Standards to abide by.

Regular learning walks, lesson observations, data drops, book scrutinies and half-termly pupil progress meetings all hold our practice to account.

In many other sectors, public services are outsourced to private providers eg building regs inspections, NHS procedures, waste management etc. How about the government actually use private schools more? Eg fund sending some children to local private schools. Radical maybe but the state system hasn’t worked for years/decades.

Or, use virtual teaching.

@Namechangedforthisthreadhere

You don't. I had the misfortune of working with 2 of the most incompetent teachers ever and they're still there - disorganised, falsifying results, chaotic you name it.

A large part of why private schools are better is because they are more expensive per pupil. I can't see how any government could justice sending a few pupils to private schools (barring SEN).

GCSE results against Fisher data and A levels as above predicted grades based on GCSEs.

Yes. But that will never happen. Everyone must be equal. It’s just that some are more equal than others. Ask Keir, he’s captain of this sinking education ship now, with no motivation to improve it beyond telling everyone we’ll tax the rich and give you a few thousand more teachers. That’ll do it.

Its not that they haven't been identified, its that the SLT is so poor, weak and incompetent that they either do nothing and get others to do it for an easy life or its nepotism and they get others to do it for an easy life.

Yet strangely the same SLT will chase out anybody that points this out to them.

There are now quite a few teachers in the system who shouldn't really be teachers, but beggars can't be choosers, it's them or no one.

Fisher data is bollocks.
I say that as someone who tended to do well against it.

It really doesn't take a genius to identify poor performing staff. Parental complaints, chaotic classrooms, kids not being taught the stuff they are meant to be taught. Performance related pay was never about identifying poor performing staff, it was about deciding whether a teacher should go up the pay scale. And when schools are short of money, it is easy to make it so that the answer is 'no' even if the teacher is good.

Because that worked so well in the pandemic?

The issue with FFT data etc. is that you can start with a class that is already poorly performing depending on the make up of the class and who the SLT decide just to shove in there.

I do wonder how different things would be in schools now if the previous government had gone with their advisor's plan of £15 billion covid catch-up. The extra interventions, the extra sport, the extracurricular activities. Would be still be seeing the same issues with mental health and SEN?

@noblegiraffe Yes - it's either useless teachers or no teachers and SEN staff covering classes so their pupils miss out 9I know - I was that SEN teacher)

I've had the misfortune to work for 2 HTs who were happy to take the salary at the end of the month but didn't want the responsibilities that came with it.

But it's all there is. If a pupil is predicted a 4 and they get a 6 in your subject but 4's in most other subjects i think you can claim some credit in either motivating them to perform or preparing them well for exams.

Or if the government had done what teachers wanted during Covid

So the Teachers who have taught them at other points, or in other intersecting subjects don’t count? Things that have improved/worsened for them outside school?
’It’s all there is’? Bollocks. It’s a nonsense.

My DS attended a special school and headteacher used money to build a shelter in playground and refused students any catch up lessons. Government should have ring fenced money for catch up activities either academic or social but they failed to do that.

The cost of training/paying fewer state teachers may offset it along with the efficiency improvements associated with eased pupil numbers in the state system.

If a pupil is predicted a 4 in art based on their results in maths and English in KS2 but actually they're a talented artist, and get a 7, is that because the art teacher is better than their other teachers?

Similarly, if they are predicted a 7 in music because they did well in maths and English at KS2 but actually they're not great at playing an instrument because they only started in Y9 and get a 4 in music, is that down to a crap music teacher?

When I was training, there was a 9k grant. I think some people can’t afford to do PGCEs. They also used to do golden hellos for shortage subjects.